The happiest thing to happen in the life of a married couple is to have a child. But you don’t get a baby for a song!. The mother has to suffer immeasurable physical and mental pain while carrying and at the time of delivery. Raising a child involves sacrifices. The parents have to undergo a lot of stress and strain even after the child is grown up and became a father.
They are aways anxious about their son or daughter’s welfare irrespective of their age.
With all that, when the child addresses you, affectionately or angrily, ‘ mom or dad’, you forget everything. All the sufferings vanish. The joy is the same even after the child has grown up and has his own child.
For the parents, a child is a child always.
Yesterday, I was discussing with Megh the mental turbulence me and my wife had to pass through, when she was carrying our first child. A gynecologist friend feared that due to my wife’s previous medication the child might be deficient in brain development. She even went to the extend of advising the termination of the pregnancy. Alarming was her suspicion and also her solution but we were very clear in our mind that come what may, we were going to have the child. But imagine the mental agony we had to pass through during the period of pregnancy.
When the baby was born and certified as was in perfect physical and mental health, tears rolled down from our eyes and that moment is unforgettable. I touched every nook and corner of the baby to make sure that he was fine. Counted his fingers and toes, looked at the size of the head from near and far and did all sorts of monkey tricks to ensure that the baby was normal in all respects.
After bringing him home, when I saw a blooming baby in the cradle, unknowingly a pet name came out of the depth of my heart and I uttered rather loudly, with eyes about to shed water, ‘Kutta!’
He is still Kutta for me though he has fathered a Kuttan and a kutti, a son and a daughter.
Only parents will understand the feeling of another parent.
In marriage sex has an important role but it is the emotional involvements of the pair that counts most.